Like the best giallo scores, Surprise Chef’s Frogs In A Pond finds beauty in the uneasy marriage of the sinister and the seductive. Its analog warmth and locked-in grooves evoke a bygone era without becoming trapped in it, blurring the line between recordings from 2026 and 1976. The eerie mood of the compositions, mixed with the 8-track recording, creates an auditory twilight zone that’s both nostalgic and immediate.
Category: Surprise Chef
Surprise Chef :: Education & Recreation
On Education & Recreation, the Australian quintet digs into the laidback ethos of breezy coastal funk. Like a 70s surf soundtrack with drum breaks, the twelve pieces assembled for their third record finds Surprise Chef charting the ebb and flow of tidal groove with an added emphasis on the need to get up and move.
Surprise Chef :: All News Is Good News
Australia’s Surprise Chef dish out heaps of heady grooves. The instrumental quartet first issued their debut album, All News Is Good News, in late 2019 as a blink and you’ll miss it pressing on their own College of Knowledge imprint. Copies sold out within a week, but thankfully the good folks at Mr. Bongo have done us all a solid, making it available for the wider world to hear.